


Labels

by preciousbunnynoiz



Series: Love doesn't fix all but can help [6]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Love, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 02:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11773701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preciousbunnynoiz/pseuds/preciousbunnynoiz
Summary: Yuuri and Victor both carry labels, phrases,  in their hearts that they have learned from others to apply to themselves.Labels that hurt.Labels that harm.Maybe they help each other let them go. (this is not about homophobia in anyway)





	1. Yuuri

“Oh my god you’re crying again? What is it this time! You’re such a crybaby!”

Yuuri ignored his sister. He’d spent the day being teased about his weight and his ballet classes and now she’d knocked his favourite snack out of his hands.

“OH MY GOD! You’re too sensitive Yuuri! You have to toughen up!” she snarked before stomping off to her room to slam the door.

His friends were right. Sisters changed when they became teenagers.

+++

“So what you have to miss a week of practice? We’re busy and need your help” Hiroko shrugged as she walked past with a crate of beer ignoring her son’s pout. At 13 it was far less cute than it had been at 3.

“But Mom! I _need_ that practice if it’s ever going to be able to skate against Victor! PLEASE!” he begged, “If I don’t keep up with practice my career will be over before it starts and that means my life will be over before it starts!” he was on his knees begging as she walked past to pick up another crate of beer.

“Really Yuuri. Stop overreacting and get up” Hiroko ordered briskly.

Sulking Yuuri stood up reluctantly, already sniffing to try to keep the tears back.

Hiroko rolled her eyes.

“Really Yuuri! You’re far too sensitive!” she sniffed.

+++

“Yuuri! What’s wrong! Are you hurt?” Toshiya cried having run up the stairs when his son started wailing. Had a girl (or boy) broken his heart? Had he injured himself?

Yuuri was laying on his bed clutching his body pillow of that handsome foreigner he liked and sobbing uncontrollably.

“Yuuri! Son! Tell me what’s wrong!” he stood hovering over his teenage son extremely unsure but wanting to help.

“He he…he cut his haiiiirrrr!” The last word came out in a long drawn out wail.

Toshiya was extremely confused.

“What?” he asked after a moment filled with grief laden sobbing from his son.

Wordlessly Yuuri pointed to his laptop. Toshiya cautiously moved the mouse to see a picture of the same good-looking foreigner but with short hair.

Toshiya’s sympathy disappeared.

“Really? Oh Yuuri you’re too sensitive! It’s just hair” Toshiya said before throwing up his hands in frustration.

+++

“You’re too sensitive!” Yuuko told him when he cried after missing a jump for the tenth time in a row.

+++

“You’re too sensitive!” Nishigori said when he lost his temper at being called fat again.

+++

“You’re too sensitive!” Minako said when he kicked a locker after failing to podium at a competition.

+++

“You’re too sensitive!” coach after coach said as Yuuri crumbled under pressure.

+++

“You’re too sensitive!” Phichit told him when he lost his temper after one of Phichit’s hamsters had destroyed his Victor poster.

+++

“You’re too sensitive” his first attempt at a boyfriend told him as well as his classmates, his other rinkmates, his teachers.

Over and over again Yuuri heard that phrase.

He learned to cry when alone and keep complaints to himself as much as possible.

It rarely worked

+++

To say that Yuuri was having a shit day was an understatement. He kept falling on all his jumps it seemed like, probably because he had slept poorly the night before.

He was frustrated and angry with himself and so he did what he always did in that kind of situation.

He locked himself in one of the toilet stalls in the rink to have a good cry when he was alone.

“Yuuri?” Victor’s sent a shiver of panic through Yuuri and he hastily wiped his face with the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry Victor I’ll be out soon!” he called out in as falsely happy a voice as he could muster. He couldn’t let Victor see him cry. He’d had a meltdown in China and he had learned long ago that was as much as was allowed. The circumstances had been different as well, he’d had almost a good excuse that time.

He didn’t have that luxury this time.

He heard Victor walk over to outside his stall and heard the man sigh as he leaned against the frame of it.

“You don’t have to pretend you’re okay”

There was a silence while Yuuri looked at the cracked and stained tiles.

“I…it’s nothing. It’s stupid. I’m just being stupid.” Yuuri said quietly, hugging himself tight.

“I’m sure it isn’t.” Yuuri gave a bitter laugh at that response.

“Oh trust me it is. I’m just…frustrated with practice and myself and so…I cried?” he gave a helpless sort of shrug even though he knew Victor couldn’t see it, “See I told you it was dumb”

Victor sighed and Yuuri tensed, waiting to hear it.

“That’s not dumb Yuuri. That’s understandable. Especially from someone so-” here it came…

“Sensitive”

“Passionate”

Yuuri and Victor said at the same time.

There was a beat of silence before…

“What?”

“What?”

Yuuri stood up and unlocked the door, opening it to stare Victor in the eyes.

“You said passionate” Yuuri told Victor breathlessly. Victor for his part looked confused.

“Well yes”

“Passionate. Not too sensitive” Yuuri had never heard that word to describe himself before in this sort of context.

“Well you’re sensitive but in the way that makes you a great artist but you’re not too sensitive. How can a person even be ‘too sensitive’?” Victor asked in confusion.

“Everyone my whole life has complained that I’m too sensitive because I get upset about the little things.” Yuuri clenched his hands in front of his chest. Please let it not hurt this time.

Victor smiled at him, a gentle thing filled with meaning.

“That’s what I mean by passionate. You feel so strongly about the things you love and the things you hate. You bring a fiery passion into everything you do, that’s why you’re performance levels are the best in skating and also why the ‘little things’ as you put it mean so much to you. You can’t have one without the other. It’s not a bad thing to be passionate” Victor’s words cut through Yuuri like a knife, but instead of leaving behind wounds and pain and it filled him with a sense of love.

He took a step closer to Victor.

“No one has ever put it that way before. Everyone else always complains about how high maintenance I am.” Yuuri let his head lean on Victor’s shoulder as he whispered this him like it was a secret.

Victor of course immediately took the opportunity to wrap Yuuri in a hug.

“hmmm but maintaining you isn’t a chore at all” he said with a smile as he nuzzled his face into Yuuri’s hair, “it’s the greatest joy in my life” he added quietly.

And now Yuuri was crying for a very different reason.


	2. Victor

It wasn’t ever in the words people spoke.

It was in the way his mother sighed when got excited and spoke fast and at length on figure skating.

It was the way his father looked bored when he talked.

It was about the way Yakov muttered to himself when he waved Victor away.

It was in the ex boyfriends (and a few girlfriends) who left him with an easy wave of their hand and a long suffering sigh.

It was a message he got loud and clear without a word being said.

+++

He didn’t say anything about it to Yuuri until the night after Yuuri met him at the airport after the Rostelecom Cup.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess” Victor leaned his weight into Yuuri as they sat on the train.

“You’re not a mess Victor” Yuuri disagreed leaning back.

“But I am. I left you when you needed me and then roll up looking like this. I know it’s hard to love me but…”

“It’s not hard!” Yuuri protested but Victor could see that wasn’t true in his face and just laughed quietly.

“Well anyway…” he almost whispered, “I’m sorry”

+++

As they lay there wrapped in each other’s arms beside the rink in Barecelona he mentioned it again. He’d come so close to losing this embrace.

“Please don’t leave me ever” he said as he held Yuuri close, “I know it’s hard to love me but…”

“You’re not hard to love!” Yuuri interrupted indignantly, “and I won’t leave you! Ever!”

Victor would like to believe it on both accounts but he knows better.

+++

It came up again during nationals.

And again after Yuuri moved in.

And again after practice one day.

And again.

And again.

He’d always say “I know it’s hard to love me…”

And Yuuri would always reply “You’re not hard to love!”

And sometimes Victor would almost believe him.

+++

On this day Victor had burned dinner again and he and Yuuri had had a disagreement over a bit of choreography.

They made up but now they were cuddled up on the couch watching a movie and Victor felt such overwhelming love for the man next to him.

“Thank you,” Victor blurted out and immediately wanted to push the words back down his throat as Yuuri turned to him in confusion, “Thank you for loving me,” he continued on instead, “I know it’s hard to love me…” he began and this time Yuuri hesitates for a moment before replying and Victor steels himself.

“It’s not…easy…sometimes” Yuuri admits and Victor feels his gut twist in preparation for the break up speech, “But not in the way you seem to think” Victor thinks he’s stopped breathing.

“You’re selfish, and blunt, and childish, and unbelievably extra…but also charming and sweet and romantic and kind. You’re not hard to love. It’s easy to love you. So easy that its hard. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to be carried away like a balloon so filled with love for you I feel. And sometimes I’m cross with you or you say something that makes me think ‘You’re lucky I love you’ but that makes it easier as well because it means you aren’t this unattainable god anymore. You’re just _my_ Victor.” Yuuri leaned over to kiss the top of Victor’s head.

Victor doesn’t realise he’s crying until Yuuri is kissing the tears away.

**Author's Note:**

> Both Yuuri and Victor's labels of being "too sensitive" or "hard to love" were beliefs I carried that my husband helped me deal with


End file.
